1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a card switch device, particularly to a switch device supporting memory cards of different standards.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the progress of IT, storage medias based on semiconductor technology are gradually replacing the conventional floppy disks, compact disc (CD), and becoming new and developing storage medias which are also called memory cards. And they have been widely used in the digital products with the corresponding sockets, for example, Notebook, PDA, e-Book, DSC, MP3, etc. Compared with said conventional storage medias, they are better in portability, power consumption, data preservation, data-transmission rate, reread-write, shockproof and moisture-proof features. However, the memory cards are legion on the market, such as Compact Flash (CF) card, Secure Digital (SD) card, MultiMedia card (MMC), Memory Stick Duo (MS Duo) card, etc. Therein, the CF card published in 1994 is the most popular, and its standard has been embedded in a great variety of digital products. In this case, only CF Card can be used in digital products, that is to say, other kinds of cards can""t be used. Thus, manufacturers have studied a CF card interface switch so that other memory cards can be used in the products with embedded the CF card standard. The interface switch has CF standard and can switch and support single standard card (e.g. SD card or MMC card).
However, the CF card interface switch can not support a new memory card standard-xD memory card (xD picture card) published by OLYMPUS and Fujifilm together in July, 2002 (xD memory card was evolved from Smart Media (SM) card with a smaller size (20.0 mmxc3x9725.0 mm), and it is uneasy to be broken and has high capacity).
Furthermore, the read-write devices or the switch devices that have gained currency for a long time on the market can only be used for existing standard memory cards and can not compact with the recent xD card. Accordingly, memory cards can be used only in user side or product side of read-write devices or the switch devices according to xD memory card standard, and it is inconvenient and troublesome in use. But it is uneconomical if a single socket for the new standard is made specially.
To solve said problems and attain other efficacies and objects, the inventor, an expert in reading card device, invented a xe2x80x9ccard switch devicexe2x80x9d after continuous study and test.
The main object of the present invention is to provide a card switch device to allow one or more cards to insert. The card switch device includes a base frame and a base plate. The base frame has a groove to hold a plurality of cards by means of spatial overlap, and at least a first row of contact elements and a second row of contact elements are arranged on a bottom of the base frame. A socket is arranged at one side of the base plate and it is electrically connected to the base frame. When the memory cards are inserted in the groove at different times, the first or second row of contact elements will couple with the signals from the memory cards and will transform them into the format conformal to the card switch device.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a third row contact elements/pins to support SD/MMC card, and/or MS Duo card and/or xD card or other small memory cards. Therein, according to the present invention, pins of MS Duo and SD/MMC can further be arranged to be commonly-used, thus the same efficacy is obtained and the cost is reduced.
Detailed structure and effect of the present invention will become apparent according to the attached drawings and the preferred embodiment.